On Ya Wireless

Now in its second year, Drive Live, presented by PBS, is set to hit community airwaves from Monday 4 to Friday 8 February. The concept involves three acts and three studios in one show from 5 to 7pm each night. Bands confirmed so far include Lower Plenty, Brothers Grim, The Spinning Rooms, Pony Face and The Townhouses. Importantly, though, the public is invited, and there's food and beer galore. Everyone with half a brain realises how important community radio is to the Melbourne music scene, but Drive Live represents a rare chance to be directly involved in this most valuable of assets by sinking a couple, noshing out and seeing some awesome music. Ianto Kelly, drummer with The Spinning Rooms, agrees. His band's debut, self-titled album, produced with miraculous verve by Tom Lyngcoln of The Nation Blue, has been touted as one of last year's most monumental and strange, and Inpress can't quibble with that. In fact, the thought of seeing some of these songs interpreted during a live-to-air positively thrills the music-loving heart. Kelly says that it was probably due to the album that The Spinning Rooms are playing at Drive Live in the first place.

“We got asked, which was really nice,” he says. “I think a bit of word of mouth has gotten around about the album and we've been playing a lot live. So, yeah, we got an email and we're really, really excited. We're big fans of PBS and RRR. PBS especially, really, they played our album a lot more. And a lot of different songs off the album, too. They just seemed to get it a little more.”

And what does Kelly think about the Drive Live concept in general? To say that he's enthusiastic would be something of an understatement. “I've done a lot of live-to-airs, and it's usually just with the presenter in the booth. What I think is really great about Drive Live is that it's going to be with an audience and there'll be a party and two other bands as well. It should be really fun. I mean, we talk about community radio a lot, but it's sometimes nice to acknowledge that it's actually a community, you know? A smallish scene, all getting to know each other and becoming a community.”

When it comes to how his band will approach a gig as unusual as this one, Kelly says that, besides honing their cock-rock attitude, it's just really business as usual. “Like I said, we haven't done one with an audience there so I'm just going to go on past experience,” he says. “What I'm really looking forward to is getting that response from the people there as soon as it happens. When you play live-to-air you don't know if anyone's listening, and this is going to be quite different. I guess, we've just been rehearsing as we would for a normal show. I've seen video footage of past Drive Live shows, though, and it looks pretty shmick, so we might have to get our rock moves on. But I'm the drummer, so no one will be focusing on me anyway.”

PBS bills Drive Live as part of the growth and prosperity of the local music scene. Although he's touched on this already, it seems important to ask Kelly to expand on how he thinks this works? “I think it's a really good way to get attention for what they kind of do all year,” he says. “They work really hard, not making any money, lots of hours to create this sense of community and getting people to get in touch with each other. So Drive Live is just a really good thing to say to people that community radio is doing this all the time. You can lecture people about it and the radiothons can wear people down, but a fun event like this can just get people really happy about it.”

The Spinning Rooms will play live for the PBS Drive Live on Thursday 7 February.